Shorter version (14 minutes). Compelling video from the Nobel Prize winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) explaining why 1-2 billion people will die from a limited local nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

Andrew Barr and Richard Johnson of the National Post put together an excellent infographic on global nuclear arsenals. Check it out here: here.

“…trying to catalogue the nuclear warheads in the world is an almost impossible challenge. Secrecy aside, every country has different ways of tallying their arsenals (a weapon may be listed as decommissioned and not tallied, but could be made viable again.)This graphic attempts to look at the number of immediately available nuclear weapons in the world; weapons that could at a very short notice — because that is the point — be used in a war. Taking the latest data available from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists we have constructed a graph of instantly available launch devices — missiles with nuclear warheads installed and ready to fly or drop.”

This video from Harvard’s Department of Physics visualizes nuclear fusion with an array of mousetraps! A single neutron (ping pong ball) is dropped on the mass of uranium atoms (mousetraps) causing a chain reaction in which all of the atoms (mousetraps) split and eject neutrons (more ping pong balls). A more technical explanation is available here.

This introductory-level guide from our very own Dot Sulock will help students and instructors interested in learning more about the role of energy policy in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The guide covers the topics necessary for a fundamental understanding of nuclear power, the nuclear fuel cycle, some international arms agreements, and the threats posed by nuclear weapons. The intent of the study guide is to clarify the unbreakable connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Aug 1, 2015 Update: A new version of this book is now available below:

Steven Starr over at Nuclear Darkness has collected and expanded upon many studies of the consequences of nuclear war. In particular, check out Consequences of a large nuclear war and City on fire by Lynn Eden. City on fire challenges the U.S. government’s own analysis of the consequences of a nuclear strike using the case study of a 300kt detonation at the Pentagon:

The detonation of a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb would release an extraordinary amount of energy in an instant-about 300 trillion calories within about a millionth of a second. More than 95 percent of the energy initially released would be in the form of intense light. This light would be absorbed by the air around the weapon, superheating the air to very high temperatures and creating a ball of intense heat-a fireball.

By the time the fireball approached its maximum size, it would be more than a mile in diameter. It would very briefly produce temperatures at its center of more than 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius)-about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

Because this fireball would be so hot, it would expand rapidly. Almost all of the air that originally occupied the volume within and around the fireball would be compressed into a thin shell of superheated, glowing, high-pressure gas. This shell of gas would compress the surrounding air, forming a steeply fronted, luminous shockwave of enormous extent and power-the blast wave.

Read more here and be sure to explore the rest of Nuclear Darkness while you’re there!